


Interleaving

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 02:38:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11244606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Amy wasn't the only one who lived next to the crack.





	Interleaving

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd and britpicked by Persiflage.

When Sharon tripped over a small shrub and nearly fell, she realized dimly that she was going to have to sit down before gravity sorted the problem its own way. She staggered towards a stone bench, still clutching the side of her head with one hand. None of it made any sense. None of it made any _sense._

It probably didn't help that she'd put away a decent bit of champagne—good champagne that didn't deserve to be thrown back like cheap beer—and Sharon never drank more than a glass of anything. Alcohol had always made her vaguely uncomfortable—

_Another lager, the latest of many, because drunk was pleasant and fuzzy and the edges of the world smeared like streetlights in rain, while sober was a thing of hollow spaces and badly fitted puzzle pieces, a hammered-together life under a dead black sky—_

"Stop it," Sharon breathed. _"Stop_ it!" It didn't stop.

She wasn't looking where she was going—she was navigating the garden more by subconscious instinct than sight—so she jumped and let out a short shriek when someone took her arm and steadied her. "It's all right," the someone said. "It's all right. Let me help."

He maneuvered her to the bench. Sharon didn't sit down as much as collapse.

He tilted her face up gently and checked both her eyes. "You," Sharon told the man— _eyes in the sky, half the village seeing Amy's Doctor even though there is no Doctor,_ "don't exist. You _can't_ exist, you aren't real."

"But here I am. Let me _help,_ Sharon."

"How do you know my name?"

"There are two people at this reception at risk for memory integration sickness and you don't appear to be a cunningly disguised Rory, who at any rate appears to be able to cope with these sorts of things by being sane at them. That leaves Amelia's Aunt Sharon. Who lived almost as close to the crack as she did, for almost as many years, but with one crucial difference: you have an adult brain. Sharon, I can help you. _Let me."_

"I—" _The sky had stars and had never been otherwise but Amelia was still a wild child, a strange child, a child who told stories of parents she'd never, ever had—_ "Please," Sharon gasped, grinding the heel of her hand against her skull. "Anything you can . . ."

He put his hand on the side of her face, very gently. "Breathe," he murmured. "Just breathe. And trust me."

Something immaterial brushed against her, and Sharon was, very suddenly, absolutely calm.

She felt like she was being held—not embraced, but held in the palm of someone's hand. And she wasn't afraid of being dropped, or crushed, even though she felt as delicate as an origami crane. There was no need for fear. He would never hurt her.

She wasn't _thinking._ Not exactly. She was completely conscious, but the normal background chatter of her thoughts was entirely absent, making her mind feel a bit like a very clear, still pool. And like still water, it was more transparent this way; she could see all the way down to her memories.

All three sets.

_"Don't want_ that _pasghetti," Amelia proclaimed. She might be only three and three quarters—forget the "three quarters" at your own peril—but she already had a sort of queenly dignity, a look that managed to convey,_ your sovereign is unimpressed by your antics. _"Want_ Mummy's _pasghetti."_

_It was only reasonable that Amelia imagine herself up a mother. All the other little girls had one, and Amelia had a fantastic imagination. "Well," Sharon said, humoring the child, "I can try. What did your mummy put in Mummy's Spaghetti?"_

_It was a pleasant, fun little game, right up until it went wrong. Right up until Sharon tried to call a stop to the pretend and discovered that to Amelia, it wasn't. She really, truly believed she had a Mum and Dad, and she was willing to throw her plate at anyone who contradicted her. "You're not my mummy and you're stupid and I hate you! I hate you forever and ever! You're_ not supposed to be here." __

_And she stomped out, sending herself to her room before Sharon got a chance to do it—which was a good thing for Sharon's composure. She didn't know why, but something about the way Amy had said_ you're not supposed to be here _—something about the look in her eyes when she said it—cut the ground out from beneath her. As if it were more real than real life._

Sharon had never been Amelia's guardian, and she'd certainly never lived in that house in Leadworth. At the time Amelia was born, she'd just been finishing university. She didn't want children; she'd broken up with Dennis because of that, just a year ago. _You'll feel differently when you're older,_ her mother had told her, but she never did. Children were charming and fun in small doses, but _babies_ scared her: fragile, helpless, no way to communicate what was wrong with them except by screaming, and there were a hundred deadly things that could be wrong.

And Amelia—Sharon had never been able to connect with Amelia. One time, when Sharon had visited when she was five, Amelia had latched onto her mum's leg and refused to let go. She wasn't normally clingy, Tabatha explained apologetically—too independent for her own good, rather. Something had set her on edge.

_"Miss Pond?" It was Rory, the little boy who followed Amelia around like a duckling. Sharon liked him. He was certainly a much better influence than that Melody, although Sharon had given up trying to steer Amelia away from her. "Whose sister are you?"_

_"I was an only child," Sharon said. "Why do you ask, love?"_

_Rory frowned. "But you're Amelia's aunt."_

_"Yes, I am."_

_"Well, aunts are either your mum's sister or your da's. That's why people say, 'on your mother's side,' or 'on your father's side.' So you have to be either her mum's sister or her da's, otherwise you couldn't be an aunt." He said it with the air of someone laying down an irrefutable argument._

_"Amelia doesn't have a mum or dad," Sharon said. "Not everyone does. Your friend Melody lives with a foster family . . ."_

_"Melody_ has _parents," Rory said. "They're just somewhere else. And she said Amy and me can fill in until she catches up with them. Amy doesn't have parents_ now, _but nobody gets born without parents, I asked my mum. So whose sister are you?"_

_"What a question!" Sharon said weakly, and gave a little laugh to turn it into a joke. She didn't—she couldn't—you couldn't have children without parents. That was true. That was_ real. _Amelia Pond had never had any parents, and that was_ also _true. Two completely true things, fighting for space—_

_It was the first time Sharon started drinking in the middle of the day._

Sharon had never met Rory Williams before the wedding. But that memory settled smoothly in place alongside her real ones. Sharon was the sort of person who usually hated the movie if she'd read the book first, but for the first time, she could understand why some people didn't mind. The movie didn't _erase_ the book, it didn't even really supplant it, it was just different. Parallel, coexisting.

That was a good analogy. Rather better than the one about interlacing a book's pages, especially since the most brilliant thing about interlacing a book's pages was that it took more than a few newtons to pull them apart again. Betting on exactly how _much_ force could win you a few dollars off tipsy physicists, or would have if the whole thing hadn't turned into a loophole abuse contest with Richard Feynman . . .

That was irrelevant, so Sharon stopped thinking about it. Instantly.

_She drank for so many reasons. She drank to keep from thinking. She drank because of her own gnawing guilt, the suspicion that she didn't love Amelia even though she should, the vague feeling that she resented being caught here, forgoing the career she'd wanted for the sake of a child that she hadn't asked for. But most of all, she drank because of the stars._

_She hadn't seen them as a little girl. She'd been_ normal. _But these days, on her way home from the pub, she would catch glimpses out of the corner of her eye, a sky like a starling's wing. (And that was another thing not to think about, why they called them starlings—long ago, some madman's hallucination had been so close to Sharon's that the same bird had evoked exactly the same comparison.)_

_When she looked up, they were gone, of course. But for an instant, the black of the sky would look unnatural, oppressive, a tomb sky for a zombie planet. A thousand things in the world didn't make sense. Artists drew pictures of things that never were, explorers made their way across the sea despite scientific assurances that there was no way they could have done. If you looked into these things too hard, you went mad. Just look at Carl Sagan, poor man. Or Kepler._

_Stars were a warning. Stars were the first sign._

_So when Amelia started drawing them, Sharon sounded every alarm that there was. It wasn't a passing, childish fancy. Amelia believed in stars. Amelia might well see them._

_Sharon knew it ran in the family, after all. And if_ she _was slowly, inexorably sliding towards total alcoholism because of the stars, what would they do to a child? Sharon had a duty not to pass on her own broken-ness. Whatever it took._

There were fewer starless memories than there were ordinary living-in-Leadworth ones, and fewer of either than of her real life.

She could forget the alternates, Sharon thought, and the thought ached like an old wound. They could be erased, smoothed away as if they never existed, as easily as breathing. She could even forget that _this_ had ever happened, that she had started feeling sick as soon as the blue box appeared and fled the reception hall four drinks later. But she would have to ask. In a normal, unaltered state of consciousness, capable of wanting things and being frightened, she would have to ask. It was too important a decision for anything less.

_Amy never said she loved Sharon. But then, Amy never said she loved anyone._ People say they love you, _she'd said once,_ and then they disappear. _Sharon had no idea who she was talking about, or what had made her so jaded._

_She was a fey creature, reckless and wild; you could almost expect her to vanish the moment you took your eyes off her. She would have seemed at home at twilight in a forest, or near some mist-shrouded castle, but Leadworth was too mundane for her. She always seemed to be listening for fairy music that nobody else could hear. Sharon had done the proper thing, the responsible parent thing, and got her counseling for her more disturbing strangenesses, but it didn't take. After a long struggle, Sharon had admitted to herself that it never would._

_And Amy would never love her. Not really. Not like a child loves a parent. Sharon still caught that look on her face, sometimes, as if Sharon had betrayed her—as if Sharon had personally robbed her of a mother and a father._ You're not supposed to be here, _the look said._

_But she was. And she always had been, and she would be for as long as Amy needed her, because that was what responsible people did. Sharon cared for Amy—she wasn't sure if it counted as love, when two people were so mutually incomprehensible—but even if she hadn't, she had a duty to Amy._

_Sharon Pond did not walk away from duty. Even if she drank herself to death trying to do it._

And then her memories were all shuffled neatly together, like a pack of playing cards, and Sharon started thinking again. "Better?" the Doctor said gently, taking his hands off her face.

"What," Sharon said, very, very calmly, "the _hell._ Was that?"

"Memory interleaving. That's the best translation. There's never been an English word because humans don't have to do it often, although some of you—like Amy—manage it instinctively. She learnt it as a child, when all her dreams came floating in through a crack in the wall. You were exposed to the same anomaly, but as an adult; your brain had already pruned down, already decided what _possible_ and _impossible_ meant. So you didn't adapt as well. You tried to shove contradictory memories into the same space instead of shelving them side by side. I reorganized your filing system." He sounded ridiculously pleased with himself. "Are you all right?"

He had been inside her head. He had _rearranged_ the inside of her head.

Granted, he'd done it with exquisite gentleness. But while he'd been touching her, Sharon had been completely incapable of thinking anything he didn't allow her to think. And the other thoughts, the ones that, on reflection, didn't feel a thing like her own—darting, sparkling, silvery minnow-like thoughts—those came from him. He'd put them there.

Nobody could do that. It was impossible. Whoever, _whatever_ the Doctor was—Sharon didn't even have a word for him, and that was terrifying. Not the same terror as hitting black ice on a bridge—it was slower and colder than that—but possibly even worse, because pain might be horrible and death might be unimaginable, but neither of them could turn Sharon into not-Sharon. The Doctor could have. With a thought.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said softly.

Sharon squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm very grateful for your help, but I'd prefer it if you'd stop reading my mind now that you're done." Because the problem with trying not to think things was that you always ended up thinking them anyway, and _what are you, what the hell are you, you're never human_ could be taken as insulting. The last thing Sharon wanted was to be insulting.

"I wasn't," the Doctor said.

She had no way to tell if he was lying.

On the other hand, he really _hadn't_ hurt her. And right now he was wearing an almost comical expression of concern, moving his head back and forth to check her pupils, a motion rather like a curious ferret. "I'm fine," Sharon said. "I think."

"Good!" He beamed.

"I'm confused, though. Two sets— _three_ sets of memories—I'm an ordinary person, I—" Time machine. Amy's Doctor stories all mentioned his time machine. She used to make plans about where to go, checking history books out of the library as tour guides. "Haven't even gone time traveling," Sharon said, feeling as if she were stepping off a ledge even though she'd already plummeted without coming to harm. Time travelers. Prisoner Zero. Aliens.

It was all real.

"Not forwards or backwards in time, no. More sideways-ish. You see, there was a flaw, an anomaly in the universe, like a line of bad code in a computer program, except not very much like that because computer programs are sequential and the universe fundamentally isn't. Oh, it _likes_ a cause for every effect, but I've found that it doesn't particularly care what order they come in, and even if the effect happens to cause the cause without being caused by something else," he moved his fingers questingly, trying to recapture the runaway sentence, "first," he went on, with an air of not being entirely sure that was the word he'd been aiming for, "the universe doesn't generally kick up much of a fuss. So! Crack in the universe. Amy Pond's parents fell through. Now, once they had slipped out of existence nobody could remember them, but you were still listed as next of kin on some half-blank piece of paper, so you became her guardian.

"When the cracks got worse, when the event that was producing them propagated across time and space, it left Earth alone in a dark, disintegrated universe. And blimey, _that_ must have been a hell of a nonsensical timeline, barely anchored by cause and effect at all—poets writing odes to stars they'd never seen, physicists making discoveries they had no way to think of—because it wasn't a proper _history_ as much as a patchwork, events pulled sideways out of their proper place and struggling to hold some sort of coherence even as the timeline collapsed under its own illogic. As a person with certain fundamental objections to the universe going _pffft_ on account of it's where most of my friends live, I was forced to do something about that. Something that sealed up the cracks _across all time,_ so that Amy's mum and dad never disappeared and you never adopted her, and everything was put back where it should be. Except me. I re-existified just this afternoon—that's a rubbish word, I'm not using that word. Understand?"

"Not really," Sharon admitted.

"Yes, well, that's normal. The universe makes sense on its own terms, not yours or mine." The universe wasn't the only one. "The short version: history was changed and now you have memories of things you never did. Ignore them or learn from them, it's up to you. Is that better?"

"A bit," Sharon said. "Thanks." She decided not to think too hard about the easy way the Doctor had mentioned saving _all of creation._ If she thought about the power that implied, she would curl up in a corner and start meebling. And the Doctor didn't deserve that. He might frighten the tar out of her, he might operate on a level she couldn't even describe, but he was oddly sweet for all of that. 

"By the way," the Doctor said, "thank you."

"For what?"

"Looking after Amelia. I know you didn't do it in _this_ universe, but it wouldn't be the first time something that never happened made way for the things that did."

"I don't remember it all," Sharon said, "but I think I was a bit hopeless at it."

"Yes, but you didn't give up. If you had disappeared on her, however mundanely, after both her parents were erased by what must have seemed like black magic—it wouldn't have been good. And her mum and dad won't be thanking you because they can't remember how much they owe you, so I thought I would. _Someone_ should."

"You care about her a lot," Sharon said. "Don't you."

"She _fed_ me." He made it sound deeply significant. "And besides, she's a friend. I exist because of my friends, on every level I can think of." The Doctor stood up. "At any rate, I've parked my box, you've sorted your memories, and I think I hear music. May I have this dance, Miss Pond?"

He seemed so very happy at getting to ask that question. Sharon found herself smiling. "I'd be delighted, Doctor."


End file.
